Yellow Line to Doraville

I have to admit that this particular objection to the renaming of our subway lines had never crossed my mind. And isn't that a good thing? My brain just isn't wired like that. The only complaints I've read until today concerned spending (wasting?) money just to redo all the signage and such. I guess we'll soon see them spending (wasting?) even more money to change "yellow" to some less offensive color description. But wouldn't "gold" offend the UGA fans? Just asking. Don't want to have to paint everything a third time.

My Favorite Headline

Sure, there were a lot of bad news headlines today. It's enough to make you want to hide all your money under the mattress (whatever is left, anyway). But there is other stuff going on in the world. My favorite headline today? This one:

Paul Johnson calls TV announcers ‘morons’

Heh. It's nothin' I hadn't thought of myself. Sports announcers can be total doofuses. (Hmmm, I have no idea how to pluralize or spell "doofus". What I wrote doesn't look right, but you get the drift...) Any time you babble throughout an entire football game, you are bound to say something stupid. Especially those prissy TV announcers. Two games ago, the announcers spent the entire game calling Roddy Jones by the name 'Roddy Smith', in spite of his last name being written in large block letters on the back of his jersey. Idiots. It made me wonder if they were actually watching the game they were calling. This week, they were second-guessing Coach Johnson's strategy and making me very glad they were not on our coaching staff. Because coaches need, you know, balls. Ahem.

One of the good things about college football season is that no matter what else is going on, the football headlines just scream normalcy. The political races are a big sucking cesspool of nasty, and the country's finances are in the shitter, but it'll take a lot more than that to affect college football. For a few blessed hours on Saturday afternoons and evenings all across this country, the players and fans get together and forget that they disagree on anything except football.

I read the Bigfoot articles so you don't have to.

It happened (allegedly) near my neck of the woods. Another couple of idiots claim to have found Bigfoot. It's all pretty standard, as Bigfoot stories go. "Evidence" so thin you can see through it. Ever-changing narratives. So-called "experts" that are anything but. In case you missed it, here it the latest claim in a nutshell.

Three different stories about how the finders are now in possession of a Bigfoot body: It was (a) shot by a felon and these guys followed it into the woods, (b) they found a whole family of Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) and bagged one, and/or (c) they were hiking in the north Georgia woods and stumbled upon a dead one.

They've had the body (allegedly) in a freezer for a month. Won't let anyone have a look, except for their own hand-picked "scientists", one of whom turned out to be the (non-scientist) brother of one of the finders. (They claim they were "just having some fun.") The low quality photo that was posted to the internet looks like an ape suit wadded up in a big Styrofoam cooler.

To match the three tales of the capture of the Bigfoot corpse, there were three DNA samples analyzed. Results? (a)human, (b) possum, and (c) cannot be determined due to technical problems.

Most damning sign that this is a hoax? These yokels are now charging $499 to lead weekend "Bigfoot hunts" in north Georgia. Because (allegedly) our woods are just chock full of Bigfeet (Bigfoots?) awaiting discovery.

So unless you think that Bigfoot is a cross between man and opossum, this probably isn't the discovery you've been waiting for.

But this does remind me of those TV specials from my childhood, about Bigfoot, UFOs, or the Loch Ness Monster. I loved those shows. Part of the magic was that these specials were fairly rare. They were not your ordinary TV fare. It wasn't as if you could hop onto the internet and indulge your taste for the paranormal. No, back then it was An Event. And back then, you could almost believe...

Not Feelin' the Love

It's not even August and I am already irritated by our local newspaper's coverage of college football. Last week the online poll asked who would win more games, UGA or Georgia Tech and the Atlanta Falcons combined. Hmm, maybe they should ask which team will have more members arrested. UGA is number 7 on the latest Fulmer Cup list. Go team.

If Rupert Murdoch Owned The Weather Channel

I saw in today's news that The Weather Channel may be for sale. What would happen if Rupert Murdoch's News Corp buys it? Here are just a few of the changes you could expect:

1. Red states consistently given rosier forecasts than blue states.
2. Hurricane coverage eliminated due to confusion about “No Spin Zone”.
3. Local traffic will continue to be covered on the eights, but “obstruction tactics of Democrats” will be listed as the cause for each jam.
4. O'Reilly to interview disaster victims and yell at them for not evacuating.
5. Every report on snow or ice to include mandatory joke about global warming.

Yes, it was a slow day at work today. Why do you ask?

"Balanced" Coverage

Today's sports section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution contained:

- a very nice two page spread about the SEC championship game on page 3-4

- a four page spread about high school football playoffs

- a 1/4 page article about the changes VT made to their defense after getting trounced by LSU early in the season. That was the AJC's sole coverage of the ACC championship game.

- Zero coverage of all other conference championship games today.

My letter to the sports page editor will go out on Monday. Right now, I've gotta get back to the games! (Watching the ACC football game and listening to the Georgia Tech basketball game.)

An Arachnophobiac's Nightmare

A massive spider web has been found in a Texas park. The freakishly large web densely covers the foliage along a 200-yard section of trail.

"Spider experts say the web may have been constructed by social cobweb spiders, which work together…"

Could be. Or maybe it’s Shelob. Creepy.

My favorite headline from last week:

Squirrel goes on rampage, injures 3.

Pity Poor Pluto

Not only is it not a planet, turns out it ain't even the largest dwarf planet in the solar system.

Instant Karma

Instant karma's gonna get you. Although I'm not sure stealing a car warrants a death sentence. Maybe she did a lot of other mean stuff.

New Worlds and Giant Fungi

A prehistoric mystery fossil has finally been identified as being a 20 foot tall fungus. Originally thought to be a conifer, the carbon diversity of the fossil was too great for it to have been a plant. (Fungi are between plant and animal life in terms of complexity.) The fossil fungus was a variety that became extinct around 350 million years ago. Apparently, before animal life took over the planet, fungi used to rule the world. The tallest trees were only about a meter high, while towering fungi were commonplace. It would be eons before animal life grew large enough to trample the fungi into more manageable sizes. A planet full of giant fungi and miniature trees would be interesting to see. And maybe one day we will see something like that, perhaps on a world such as the one described below.

In other news, a habitable planet was found outside our solar system, orbiting a red dwarf. It is a bit larger than earth and has a very short orbital period, but its temperature range would support liquid water. No word on rotation or the presence of an atmosphere. It orbits a red dwarf star, which is larger and less bright than our own sun. Wouldn't it be cool if we ever got to colonize a new planet, and it turned out to harbor life in its prehistoric stages, with giant 20 foot fungi all over the place? Like being an alien world wouldn't be strange enough. Giant fungi! That would really be something.

The nifty illustration is a scanned image of the cover of my 1978 Avon edition of Omnivore. I would credit the artist, but the book doesn't name names.

What's the deal with pollen counts?

According to our local newspaper, a pollen count over 120 particles per cubic meter is "extremely high". We've had three days this week with pollen counts over 5000. This is an order of magnitude greater than "extremely high" on the scale. There is no way to distinguish any difference between a pollen count of 500 or 1000 or 5000 without resorting to ridiculous nomenclature. Very extremely high? Stupendously amazingly high? Really, really astronomically tremendously very high?

What we need is a non-linear scale for pollen counts. Sort of a pollen count Richter scale, if you like. Because otherwise, every spring day that does not include rain will end up being rated "extremely high" for pollen, and that doesn't tell us anything that a glance at our car wouldn't give away.

In The News: 'Bad Idea' Edition

Generally, it's a bad idea to:

1. Open a "Hooters" restaurant in the middle east. They have a cow about women driving and showing any skin that doesn't have eyelashes attached. What are they going to do about women waiting tables in orange silk short-shorts? And are they still going to offer the ham and cheese or pulled pork BBQ sandwiches?

2. Use your cell phone to send someone a photo of your naked breasts popping out of your unbuttoned police uniform, complete with clearly visible name badge. Like that's NOT going to end up on the internet. Riiiiggghht.

3. Stash a dead passenger in first class.

Return of Naked Sunday

Remember my post about a Dutch gym's upcoming 'Naked Sunday'? Well, last Sunday they really did it. Warning - Link contains a photo showing sweaty naked guys working out on machines, so potentially NSFW (or small children, or people with ass crack phobias).

I'm sure it will not surprise you to learn that there were no women participating in this little event. It may have had something to do with the small army of reporters who showed up wielding cameras, microphones, and TV crews. "It's spectacular!" cried one enthusiastic participant. Another says "it just feels better ... with your clothes off."

They went so far as to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for this thing! With town council participation. I find that terribly amusing.

Not everyone thinks this is a good idea. Some people have quit their gym membership in disgust. Apparently I am not the only one who would not want to use equipment that has hosted someone else's sweaty bare ass, towel or seat cover notwithstanding. I'm not sure which is worse -- the sanitation issue, or having to see jiggly naked flesh everywhere you look. Oh, the horror!

In spite of the minor setback of a few cancellations, the gym plans to go boldly forward with more Naked Sundays, and predicts a bigger crowd next week after all the publicity. Maybe the naked exercisers will finally outnumber the journalists. Or some chicks will show up.

Desparate Astronauts?

Love triangles? Attempted kidnapping? Attempted murder? This is not your daddy's space program...

Naked Sunday?

A Dutch gym has unveiled plans for "Naked Sunday", allowing members to work out in the nude. This sounds like an incredibly bad idea. In addition to not wanting to see all that jiggling flesh, I can't see anyone wanting to be the second person to sit on any of the exercise machines. (Yes, I read the article and they say they'll use towels and seat liners, but still...).

This was not the only odd story about working out from the last week. It appears that pole dancing for fitness is catching on in China. Claims one adherent: "It's not hard like ballet." Another says her "love of the pole" has nothing to do with sex. "It's dancing". Sure it is.

The Last Thing Your Car Needs Is More Windows.

Remember those old jokes about what would happen if cars ran like Microsoft Windows (TM)? If not, let me refresh your memory:

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation" warning light.

8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.

9. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.

11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

12. Everytime GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

13. You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.

Today, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft has partnered with Ford to offer a dashboard operating system for some 2008 vehicles. Aside from the easy jokes (see above), this seems like a bad idea. The OS will drive all kinds of personal computing devices, such as cell phones and MP3 players. Aren't drivers distracted enough? Isn't this just a spate of accidents waiting to happen? I have very little faith that it will all be so easy to use that drivers will be able to answer their email in traffic. How can they operate their vehicles when they'll need both hands to press control-alt-delete?

A movie, impatience, and my take on the news.

PDM and I finally went to see Casino Royale yesterday. Yes, I know it has been out for months, but hey - no line and no crowd! The lack of gadgets and cheesiness was totally refreshing. I liked it!

I noticed today that when my work computer is running an application slowly, or appears to be hung up, I can't resist moving the mouse around in circles. As if the computer is going to wake up or something. I'm not sure why I do it, but the longer a task takes, the more furiously I wiggle that mouse around. I just about hit light speed if the stupid little hourglass disappears entirely.

There wasn't a lot going on this morning at the alternate work location where I am obliged to spend my Mondays, Tuesdays, and some Thursdays. I amused myself by reading the news online. Here are a few snippets that caught my attention:

The American Dialect Society has chosen "plutoed" as its 2006 Word of the Year. Ironically, being chosen as the Word of the Year is the exact opposite of what the word "plutoed" actually means.

If you're going to kill someone and eat his heart, you might want to review basic human anatomy first. I don't think you gain much of the warrior's spirit by eating his chest muscle and part of a lung.

As cosmopolitan as Atlanta tries to be, it still can't escape being the subject of headlines like "Another Hogzilla Caught Near Atlanta". I can't imagine Brussels, Paris, or London ever being included in the same headline as the word "hogzilla".

And sadly, Calvin Johnson announced today that he is leaving Georgia Tech early for the NFL. I knew this was coming, and it is the best thing for him, but I can't help feeling let down by the news. But Tech's loss is the NFL's gain. Some team will be very lucky to get him and I wish him well.